


Fragile Little Planet

by pepperfield



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Off-screen Character Death, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Widowed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 05:33:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepperfield/pseuds/pepperfield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terezi and Kanaya, in the new world, sweeps later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragile Little Planet

It is in the garden that she finds Kanaya, in a haze of lavender and the sharp bite of what must be hedge trimmers in her hand. Terezi suspects that it's going to get harder and harder to dissociate her friend from that delicate floral flavor; Kanaya can't seem to go a week without enveloping herself in her wife's signature shade. Under the light of the small blue moon drifting at half shell overhead, the strange Earth flowers that Jade had bequeathed unto the couple glow with a foamy shimmering that she can taste at the tip of her tongue. She can almost see the scene in her head, as narrated by Karkat with embarrassing detail: Kanaya, back straight and weapon ready, framed by the dangling blossoms of her hanging baskets, long grasses clinging to her dress as she stands solitary in the midst of her sanctuary. He really had been so pale for her at the end, so concerned about her loneliness. Finally, Kanaya clips off her last few branches and sets her tools down.  
  
"Oh, good evening. I was going to retire soon, but I didn't expect you to visit."  
  
"Sorry, is this a bad time? I could come back later. There's some newbies at the station that I've been planning to drop in on, anyway. Give them a little scare, hehe."  
  
"No, please come in. My schedule isn't so rigid that I can't make time for an old friend."  
  
There's a measured slowness in her speech these days, and paired with the same impeccable crispness of her words, Kanaya sounds like one of the schoolfeeders Terezi's seen down in the education blocks that have been springing up in neighborhoods to encourage troll sociability. But her awkward smile is the same, from her lengthened fangs, to her slightly raised eyebrows, even though the light in her eyes now shines jade.  
  
They enter through the atrium, and Kanaya leads them to a sitting room deep in the hive. All along the way Terezi can sense things left behind by Rose: musty, creaking tomes and ink stained surfaces, soft woolen slippers under a table and a purple scarf strewn across the banister. Neither Rose nor Kanaya has ever been particularly inclined toward keeping a neat home, and even without Rose's physical presence, Terezi can feel her mark.  
  
After she sits, Terezi takes a box of items from her sylladex and puts it on the table in front of them. Kanaya looks to her for approval before placing the box into her lap and removing the cover. One by one, she takes out the contents and lays them down.  
  
"I was clearing out some space yesterday, and I found some things that I thought you might want," Terezi tells her gently. Her trainees speculate sometimes that she'll just get harsher and her teeth sharper as she gets older, but one or two have, on occasion, seen her speaking to Kanaya when the Matriarch pays a visit, and they whisper slander about how her demeanor softens like a tepid stick of grubbutter. Their are rumors about the nature of their relationship, but these are met with counterrumors about the old heroes, and those of the candy-red blood; Terezi lets them speculate as they will. Her razor-eyed lieutenant has noticed, through the window of a closed office door, the way they embrace, like old comrades who have suffered the same losses, who must hold each other up. He tells no one.  
  
Kanaya, with delicate fingers, picks up the ragged cloak of rainbow that she had crafted by hand so many sweeps ago. The edges are frayed and cut thin by sand and salt, but time has not dulled the colors.   
  
  
 _"It would be very easy to make. It wouldn't trouble me at all."_  
  
 _"Fine, okay, do whatever you want. It's not like I can stop you anyway."_  
  
 _"I assume gray would be acceptable with you?"_  
  
 _Karkat startles at that for some reason, and looks down at his dark sweater and gray pants, and then out at something beyond the physical plane. He seems lost, and painfully old. She fights the desire to hold him close. "No, actually. Fuck gray. Make it as colorful as you want. Go fucking nuts; I'm sure you'll do a great job." He scurries off to the tent without another word._  
  
 _So she does go nuts and the end result is actually kind of ridiculous, even for her. The different patches of fabric don't match, and the colors clash, but Karkat wears it everywhere, which Terezi loves and Dave teases him endlessly about. Sometimes she'll see him rubbing a corner patch, of olive green and deep pure blue, or a streak of royal purple, and he'll smile grimly, and march on._  
  
  
Drawing the fabric through her fingers, Kanaya lets out a small, barely trembling sigh. On the darkest of nights, when she wanders the empty corridors of her house looking for a distraction, she imagines that she's back in the windswept flatlands, the new constellations guiding them forward, and the weight of his hand at the base of her neck, drawing smooth, calming circles. It's easier than remembering the curl of her wife's fingers around her own.  
  
"I. Are you sure you want to part with this?" It is the matesprit's right to do with their partner's material possessions as they will; the picture in her mind - of Terezi and Karkat, so young in those days, sitting side by side swaddled in their cloaks and whispering about the most profound and trivial of things - is one for which she does not want to deny Terezi the sensory reminder. They both lost someone when he passed, but only one of them lost the love of her life, no matter how capricious and tumultuous that love was.  
  
Terezi reaches out to pat her on the hand with those thin, strong fingers, and nods. "Don't worry, it's not like I don't have other mementos. This is something special the two of you shared. It's yours."  
  
"Thank you, Terezi."  
  
Kanaya leaves the cloak draped across her lap and picks up the ratty looking novel with half its cover missing. Even so, she can tell that it's an old rainbow drinker story she used to love, the last in a trilogy. With a quick flip through, she can see the little notes left in the margins that Karkat must have taken when he was finally allowed into her book club. Page 143 says "Tell Kanaya that you accept her even if she smells people's necks like this fucking creeper - but maybe try to convince her to stop if true." She laughs, remembering that awful conversation, made exponentially worse by John's live-action reenactment of the scene with one of her mannequins.  
  
"He always told me in no uncertain terms that these were trashy." It makes her wistful, in a somewhat twisted way, for the way they used to chat over Trollian during the game. For a time when they were naive and childish and alive.  
  
"Psh, as if his rom-coms were any better. Sorry, but you guys have equally bad taste."  
  
"Ah, yes, because I should trust a judgment of culture and taste from someone who eats chalk," Kanaya teases back, picking up the last item. Or rather, bundle of items. Because what she has, when she undoes the tie, is a thick pile of letters, each addressed to her. Puzzled, she asks, "May I open these?"  
  
"Yeah, of course. They're all for you. He wrote them when we were in the capital and you were busy down in the caves, but he was too scared to send any of them to you. Said it would 'distract you from breeding duties' or some silly thing like that, blar. What a goofball. He wrote a bunch for John, and Jade and everyone too, but, well. I just hold on to those."  
  
It's not like they didn't know, when they were wigglers, that if they made it to adulthood they'd outlive half their friends. But knowing this fact, and watching the last few of their companions die sweeps before their own inevitable ends are very different things. Someday, if the peace continues, Kanaya too will go, and she will leave Terezi alone on this vast planet to carry the memory of their journey, in the twilight of her life. Kanaya does not fear death, or loneliness, but she fears what they will do to Terezi, who has already seen so much without seeing anything at all. And when Terezi fades, they really will just be the legends of old, the gods who made a new universe and paid the highest price to do so.  
  
If there were one thing she could wish for, it would be Feferi's dreambubbles, now defunct after they beat the game. The possibility of meeting everyone she has loved and hated, fought for and cried for and killed, would dull the quiet ache of seeing their ghosts in each action she undertakes to build the new world.  
  
She gathers the letters, and the book, and wraps them lovingly in her moirail's cloak, setting them aside. "I'll read them later, when I have a moment to spare in between my duties. Thank you, again, for bringing these to me. I was hoping to ask you for a favor, actually, so it was fortuitous that you came calling today."  
  
"Is it about tomorrow? You know you don't have to ask each time, sheesh. We were going to both wind up there anyway, so of course I'll go with you."  
  
"I should have expected by now that you would know the question before I asked."  
  
"Do you need me to bring anything?"  
  
"No, I already have the flowers prepared. I ask only for your company."  
  
Terezi stands, stretching out the long line of her back, and helps Kanaya to her feet. "You know that you can have that whenever you like, for as long as we're both capable."  
  
Folding her friend's hand up in her own, Kanaya walks them back out toward the main staircase. "Yes, but thank you nonetheless. She would be happy to see you."  
  
With a snicker, Terezi pulls Kanaya in for a quick goodbye hug. "Yeah, I'd be happy to see her too, but there's more than a few problems with that statement. Anyway, I'll meet you here tomorrow then. Sleep well tonight."  
  
"I will try. Goodnight, Terezi."  
  
With a last wave, Terezi is out the door, her brisk step carrying her out of the lawn ring, back toward the bustle of the big city. Kanaya watches her until she's no longer visible, and then slowly turns back into her home, stopping to gather Karkat's things, and Rose's scarf before she heads upstairs. It's time to sleep. She wants to look nice when she visits her friends' graves tomorrow.


End file.
